In the Quietness
by Dante 101
Summary: Lightning deals with a devastating loss.


**Please read the notes of the author before reading the story.**

**A/N: This just a fanfic that's for a couple of games that haven't come out yet**.

**Rating: PG-13 for general dark angst themes. Character death.**

**Disclaimer: I own this not, you sure don't own this not also.**

**Summary: Lightning deals with a devastating loss.**

The English morning was cold and quite foggy; clouds covering the sky, preventing the sun from shining through. Like her life since his passing. Sadness and depression had indeed consumed her, leaving but nothing but a shell of her former self, unable to recall the last time she had ever laughed or smiled.

She no longer had a reason to do any of those things at all.

Stepping through the gates, she made her way up the hill, trembling as she went. She'd been totally dazed since the funeral, like it wasn't really happening. Seeing the grave made it real, and the grief tore at her endlessly; tears stung her eyes and she blinked rapidly in order to get rid of them. She sunk to her knees before the headstone. With a shaking hand, she traced the words.

_Noctis Luis Caelum_

_2052-2070_

_Beloved Son, Brother, Friend Hero, and Fiancé_

There was no use at hiding from it now; the truth was staring at her right in the face. He was gone forever from her life. She would never hear him laugh ever again, or plan his next prank on one of his friends; she'd never again be held or kissed or made love to by the man she'd grown to love more than life itself.

The man she was supposed to have married today.

"I know should have come sooner. It's been months now, I know, but I didn't know what to say to you; I still don't." She blinked as the tears stung her eyes once again. "Damn it Noctis, this isn't how it should be at all! I shouldn't be living with memories of you; I should be living with you! But I'm not. And I blame Snow for this."

She gave a shaky sigh.

"It's not his fault; I know that; he didn't ask you to take that bullet that was meant for him. But today should've been our wedding day instead, and yet here I am visiting your grave instead."

She traced absent patterns in the dirt, raw emotion choking her voice as she spoke her next words.

"It's not fair at all. I should be walking down the aisle, carrying red roses and dressed in white, with you waiting for me. Instead I'm carrying red roses, walking up a hill at the cemetery, wearing black, and ... you're waiting for me here."

She placed the bouquet in front of the weathered white marble, the dark red blooms a striking contrast with it. Kneeling on the grass, she stared at the gravestone for a couple of long moments, grief and despair wrapping around her like a cloak, squeezing her chest until she almost couldn't breathe at all.

She was going through the motions of it; living without living at all. Existing. Alone in a pain her friends couldn't understand because their husbands and boyfriends and fiancés had returned in one piece; one Stella couldn't know because Noctis had made the ultimate sacrifice and laid down his life for Snow's.

"Damn you, Noctis Luis Caelum! You promised me you'd never leave me! You promised, but you lied. You lied to me!"

The pain and despair finally gave way to the anger she hadn't allowed herself to acknowledge since they had received word. She hated him for leaving her like this, and she hated herself for hating him like this. But most of all, she hated the fact that she never got to say good-bye at all to her one true love.

"What am I supposed to say to you now Noctis?" she choked out, "That I don't know how to go on without you? That my heart aches so badly for you I can't breathe? That I'll never love another man the rest of my life?"

She sighed yet again.

"I don't know how to move on like this now. It's like it's not even my life anymore; it feels like it's happening to someone else. And seriously, I wish it was. But it's not at all. And I know this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you that I love you, and then I let you go and move on; but I can't do that at all. Because as much as I love you, I'm not ready to let you go. I don't think I ever will be ready at all."

She played with her engagement ring, watching the diamond glitter in the late afternoon sun as she stood, making her way back down the hill and out the cemetery gates. Turning around, she looked back at the hilltop.

"Wait for me, Noctis," she whispered, "because I'll be waiting the rest of my life for you forever."

~The End~


End file.
